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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Legendary jazz musician Clark Terry dead at 94

Clark Terry, left, talks with Quincy Jones in 2001. (Associated Press)
Charles J. Gans Associated Press

NEW YORK – Legendary jazz trumpeter Clark Terry, who mentored Miles Davis and Quincy Jones and played in the orchestras of both Count Basie and Duke Ellington and on “The Tonight Show,” has died. He was 94.

Terry’s wife announced his death on his website late Saturday night. Gwen Terry’s statement did not provide further details, and she did not immediately respond to messages from the Associated Press.

“Our beloved Clark Terry has joined the big band in heaven where he’ll be singing and playing with the angels,” Gwen Terry wrote on the musician’s official Facebook page.

Terry had been in failing health in recent years after suffering from extreme complications of diabetes.

“The world has lost one of the greatest trumpeters to ever grace the planet,” Quincy Jones wrote on his Facebook page. “Clark Terry was my first trumpet teacher as a teen in Seattle, my idol, and my brother. When he left the Basie and Ellington bands, also two of my idols, to join mine, it was one of the most humbling moments in my life.”

Jones honored his mentor by co-producing the documentary “Keep on Keepin’ On,” which premiered in September and focused on the relationship between Terry and his young protégé, blind jazz pianist Justin Kauflin.

During a career spanning more than seven decades, Terry was a mentor to generations of jazz musicians, starting with Miles Davis, who first met Terry as a teenager growing up in East St. Louis, Illinois.

Born in St. Louis in 1920, Terry displayed his passion for music as a child, fashioning a makeshift trumpet by attaching a funnel to a discarded garden hose with a lead pipe for a mouthpiece. Neighbors were so upset by the racket he made that they chipped in to buy him his first trumpet from a pawn shop.

In 1960, he became the first African-American musician hired as a staff musician at NBC and joined the house band on “The Tonight Show,” where he played for nearly a decade. Terry appeared as a sideman and leader on more than 900 recordings, including sessions with Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie and other leading jazz artists.

In 1991, Terry was named an NEA Jazz Master, the nation’s highest jazz honor, and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.